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‘Rather than simply work within existing parameters of operational excellence (incrementally optimising your business model to meet customer needs), pioneering leadership sees you embarking upon quests. Such quests allow us to systematically explore complex and uncertain futures. We don’t set goals in the hopes that a particular future will manifest — rather, we explore multiple possible futures, and prepare proactive stratagems to capitalise on each.’

Dr. Jason Fox

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“We find the true person only through group organization. The potentialities of the individual remain potentialities until they are released by group life. Thus, the essence of democracy is creating. The technique of democracy is group organization.”

Marly Parker Follett, The New State

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Research shows time and time again smaller teams are more effective at getting things done. The typical business response to this is to, well, build small teams. Simplistically all they have really done is create mini departments within larger departments – silos within silos as you wish. Yes. Some of the teams may be interdepartmental but whether you call them squads, teal dots, whatever, eventually they become a static group of people working together.

In order to be truly emergent, and ensure a business brings forth its best “team” against an emergent opportunity, the teams themselves cannot remain static, they must be malleable. This doesn’t mean I am suggesting no teams stay together nor does this mean breaking up all teams all the time. What it does mean is that the organization, and the teams, are malleable to adapt to contextual opportunities. The organization becomes molecular.

This is an environmental, attitudinal, organizational idea which, if embraced, enables the conceptual thinking, autonomy and emergent abilities. To slightly paraphrase “The Individualized Corporation”:

Companies cannot renew their business unless they first revitalize their people. This will not happen thru workshops, inspiring corporate commitments or powerful incentives if the internal environment is like an oppressive, energy sapping environment of downtown Calcutta in midsummer. This environment either created mentally by the people themselves or by poor leadership, saps all initiative, creativity, commitment & belief/hope. That said.

I believe all innovation & creativity already resides within an organization, therefore, any transformation objective should be to create an environment from which that potential emerges. No inspirational speech will motivate & energize in Calcutta in midsummer.

Rather than focusing on individual’s behaviors, the more important challenge is to change that internal environment, the behavioral context, that in turn influences people’s behaviors. To reshape these behaviors, a business must transform their behavioral context. Instead of Calcutta in the summer they must transform to a forest in spring.

Therefore, I would argue one needs to think about the model, the environment, in which the people will work.

Despite the binary discussions which occur in business, what makes a business work is the marriage of collective and individual intelligence, in other words, complex and dynamic (not binary). One of the typical issues business faces is, over time, a sentimentality toward what they have done in the past (systems) which reinforce perceptions of what makes them successful; and what makes people successful. Unfortunately, correspondingly, those perceptions diverge farther and farther away from reality. Regardless. I would argue that as long as a business keeps cloud knowledge distinct from institutional knowledge & wisdom the system will maintain a design resilience to standardization and commoditization of behavior, attitudes and institutional practice.

This actually leads me to the past, Alvin Toffler in 1985, to define this environment.

 

THE CORPORATION OF THE FUTURE

“.. the bigger the world economy, the more powerful will be the smaller players. This is because they are more flexible, faster and more economical – not burdened by layers of bureaucracy. Computers and telecommunications, now affordable to small companies, allow them to compete globally, and deregulation and globalization of financial markets gives them access to capital. Computer-driven technology also makes it possible to produce small runs of customized “higher value-added” products aimed at niche markets. Products produced “just in time” save money on inventory, and they can be quickly improved to compete with rapidly changing technology and tastes. Big companies will break up into confederations of small, entrepreneurial units. Small interacting firms will form themselves into temporary mosaics to be more adaptive and productive.”

Alvin Toffler

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• ** note: while “corporation” implies this concept is only for larger organizations, I would argue that this concept is applicable to all size businesses. In fact. I would argue many smaller businesses, without really thinking about it, do a smaller version of this idea simply out of necessity – limited resources demand using all of what you have; people potential included.

By 1985 Toffler had, at least conceptually, defined aspects of the corporation of the future (Future Shock, Third Wave & culminating in The Adaptive Corporation). He recognized that business success resided in emergent skills to adapt (have the agility) to a constantly morphing complex business world.

It became a command/control leader’s headache that knowledge could slink into any office space and anyone smart enough to use it could become smarter than the person they reported to. It is easy to see that this organization fragmentation driven by real/actual knowledge could easily become chaos unless leaders begin showcasing a different ability than maybe we have valued up until today.

This means today’s leaders need to be assimilators of fragments and creators of concepts.

They need to encourage empowered individuals and groups to accumulate knowledge and then redirecting or gathering disparate pieces of knowledge into new forms in which the organizations, and ultimately, the tribes/teams/molecules benefit from. The control of knowledge is the crux of an organization’s struggle for power, and more importantly, effectiveness. It is also then a leader’s biggest challenge in tomorrow’s businesses.

Compounding the issue is that the speed in today’s world is making facts, and differentiation/products, obsolete faster.

Therefore, knowledge built upon certain facts becomes less durable. This has 2 key impacts:

• –              truth is fleeting <and decision making has small windows of opportunity>
• –              business has become more abstract <as knowledge streams non stop into and within an organization>.

The reality of any complex business is that it is a quivering mass of vulnerabilities. In a Conceptual Age this can actually become a strength. The natural tendency of business is to ‘even up’ things and put constraints on anything they view as chaos. In other words, “we feel like we are at our best if we do the same things day after day.” The Conceptual Age organization should actually seek to exploit unevenness and exploit their vulnerabilities. If a business believes technology augments humans to maximize potential (productivity, innovation, imagination, ideation, etc.) that business should reflect on, well, human-ness (the characteristics that come along with humans). None are alike, each has potential to maximize and they are inherently imperfect. What that means is if you augment them, without constricting, you will not have consistent behavior, attitudes or even outcomes. Instead, should you empower the individual, you will create unevenness organizationally. In other words, expansion is not linear and unevenness represents geometric, or multiplicative, growth opportunities.

Which leads me to De-standardization and Molecules and Managing Complexity

             Destandardization.

De-standardization is the “anti-evenness” business idea. Toffler dedicated a chapter in The Adaptative Corporation on de-standardization. Somewhere along the way since 1985 this simply smart concept got bastardized into a lazy person’s version of it – personalization. They are different. Chasms apart in fact.

• De-standardize reflects the fact the world has become increasingly complex and context drives business outlooks, therefore, mass production (of anything) is more likely to miss relevancy than to meet relevancy.
• Personalization, in its most simplistic form, is order taking. Business cannot exist solely on order taking, it must be constructed to adapt to market shifts.

Regardless. Standardization, at minimum, suffocates complexity. Organizations, simplistically, relentlessly pursue consistency (replication) with the objective of maximizing efficiency and, as a consequence, pursues what is a potentially (mostly) reductionist strategy. Counterintuitively, over-standardization actually complicates complex systems. Therefore, in order to make complexity expansive a business has to be in the business of optimizing de-standardization.

I will note that in a utopian ‘de-standardized’ business, everything COULD be de-standardized, but only embraces its de-standardized qualities situationally. That’s not practical. The business of the future will know how to destandardize effective to maximize its complexity potential.

• ** Note: automation/robots/technology: What a crisis/pandemic has certainly done is make sure businesses examine resilience & redundancy aspects. Automation/robots/blockchain technology will benefit and, most importantly, will be overemphasized ‘standardization’ feature solutions to meet resilience objectives. In other words, the majority of businesses will confuse resilience with fragility.

             molecules

A molecular organization structure is a nuanced version of teams, organizations as organisms, teal, etc. it offers a more scientific aspect in that through alchemy, chemistry & science molecules are constantly created in new formations so their different elements emerge. It’s an emergent structural idea.

Molecular is not ecosystem, it’s a morphing of molecules to address specific needs – they can be ongoing needs (accounting, process, etc.) or situational needs, yet, because of its adaptability even the ‘consistent efficiency’ aspects can collect different ideas and evolve.

A molecular organizational structure is a derivation of the Brand Molecule (Grant; The Brand Innovation Manifesto) where we can see a malleable organizations as a collection of ideas, and people with ideas using machines/technology stored with idea fodder, working in a coherent fashion. Grant made tangible what Toffler offered us, a polymalleable organization in 1985 in intangible form.

I will also suggest that molecules thrive within complexity. It is difficult to talk about 100% emergent, and a molecular structure, without at least mentioning complexity.

• Complexity and emergent

The concept of a totally emergent organization in which the organization itself (grounded in an AI structure) always offers lily pads of the complexity, or optimal certainty, to grasp. It is possibly chaos-proof yet inherently emergent.

Navigating, or managing within, complexity is multidimensional. Its remote work, and its not, its autonomy, and it’s not. Its disconnected, yet connected. Its adaptability, yet, its consistency. It’s the optimal mix of standardization and destandardization.

I would argue that a conceptual organization, while certainly seeking concepts, is constantly scanning about for insights. I say this because I believe complexity is expansive and to unlock it’s potential one must seek to either relieve a complication (this can come to life as an external emergent opportunity or relief of an internal emergent issue) or release the potential of an emergent opportunity through some smaller “fractal” (what I envision as smaller more causal relationship which leverages velocity in some way) which can be exploited to the benefit of the business  and not at the expense of society (this is addressed in the Part about “in & of society’). this is where we circle back to algorithms, data, data fitting and data literacy.

• ** note: What many businesses have failed to recognize (mostly because they tend to focus on skills not potential, features not benefits & technologies not behaviors) is that everyone is actually a nomad now which expands the possibilities, and capabilities, of people.

Being emergent DOES demand structure, but a structure that allows people (and organizations) the freedom to try new approaches and react to changing market conditions. Suffice it to say molecular without adaptability tied to data, or intelligence driven software, is a waste of time. The potential of molecular attitude is right people, right resources, right knowledge, right ‘synergy’ at the right time. Let’s call it ‘emergent efficacy’ which is the ability to proportionately, not as a formula or a balance, apply appropriate knowledge, resources and adaptability to specific contexts.

• ** note: this will demand a business become comfortable with ‘not neat team’ structure

As noted elsewhere, this idea is messy, untidy, and businesses abhor untidiness. It will demand a different attitude, and skill, within leadership, a different way of viewing HR department responsibilities and a heightened level of human conversation within an organization. I make that last point because while it may appear at the core of this business model idea that technology bears the greatest burden of ‘conversation’ (the sharing of knowledge through technology) the real value is generated in the conversations and interactions between human beings. People working together to craft concepts and “do” what needs to be done to exploit emergent topics.

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“To be in a state of self-control, a person must know: what he/she is supposed to do, what he [or she] is actually doing, what choices he/she has to improve results wherever necessary. If any of these three conditions are not met, a person cannot be held responsible.”

JM Juran

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“As automation and artificial intelligence increasingly replace algorithmic and analytical tasks, the economy of The Conceptual Age will favour workers adept in areas that favour creativity, empathy and meaning (‘human’ concepts that are otherwise difficult to replicate by machine).”

Dr Jason Fox

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There is a lot of bullshit being written about “The 4^th Industrial Revolution” tying it to technology, renewed business moral awareness, inequality, automation, whatever. I wrote this, and that last sentence, in 2018 and still believe it. I hate labels and I hate trying to attach change to anything specific when it is more likely a confluence of factors.  I will say whatever is happening feels like a seismic shift in business ideology. That said. Whenever I scribble something about the Future of Business I keep coming back to Dr Jason Fox’s Conceptual Age idea he discussed with Mike Walsh in a podcast.

It seems to be the axis mundi for, well, everything we talk about. Purpose, distributed leadership organizational models, data/digital, thinking, innovation, etc.

Well crafted conceptual thinking.

In about 2010 I first wrote about something called “deconstruction thinking” wherein I suggested the future business model will reflect more of a “do, deconstruct & re-do” mentality. At the core of a successful deconstruction thinking model is the ability to think conceptually or in terms of concepts not rigid constructs. It was kind of a bastardized  mosh pit of scenario planning, ‘teal’, Toffler ‘polymalleable organizations’ and a desire to see effectiveness emphasized over efficiency.

I believe at the core of any future success is the coalescing of prioritized fragments into a conceptual whole in a timely fashion. This will demand not only critical thinking, but also the ability to envision how that thinking can exist in a future state.

Simplistically, concepts are about networked value creation which can occur structurally or transactionally.

Structural conceptual thinking, implemented as networked value creation, is not that difficult and has been done for decades.

Transactional conceptual thinking, combined with the actual networked value creation, is hard – very difficult. It’s about envisioning opportunities/issues, envisioning resources/ideas/abilities and envisioning how to put it into action. In other words, its difficult.

I continue to believe the future of business (in any industry) will lie in the hands of people who can not only envision THE work (present & future) as concepts in combination with the ability to articulate it in ways that make it tangible enough to be understood and acted upon (this, generally, is an idea Dr. Jason Fox has discussed).

This will demand one to embrace paradox & contradictions and dismiss either/or choices as too simplistic in a more complex conceptual world of thinking. No one should confuse this with speed or ‘faster world.’ It’s not. It is simply about moving parts of which some move fast, some tectonically slow and the majority somewhere in between.

It will take a combination of accessing ‘black box’ output (which demands some level of trust & learning) and judgement and embracing a conceptual framework of synthesizing paradoxical tensions.

The new decision making Concept world, one enabled by technology and the ‘black boxes’ of knowledge computers offer in terms of knowledge, is ultimately a deconstructive thinking world. A world in which it is understood that a stimulus can create desired, and sometimes undesired, responses, and consequences, and success is often more based on reacting & adapting to an initial stimulus than perfecting the initial stimulus. This demands conceptual thinking both to construct a plan of action as well as being able to ‘deconstruct’ and adapt as plans get implemented.

I would argue that over time the black box thinking <the intangible and vague ‘knowing’> becomes more tangible as well as we gain more faith in certain black box thinking applications. Given that belief I would also argue that Concepts, which outlines are vaguer in the beginning, gain substance & tangibleness over time.

I would also point out there is an inherent ‘human’ aspect to this idea.

Even with all the technology noise there is a persistently human future of work looming over the entire conversation. Computers are just not capable of empathy, curiosity & imagination which are the cornerstones to effectiveness. If I were to label the next age I would steal Jason Fox’s “Conceptual Age” more than just Human, or Technology, or IOT or even digital.

Oddly, the biggest challenge to thinking conceptually is NOT ability, but rather efficiency.

What do i mean by that?

The paradox is that business has a need for quality information more than ever, yet, quality information, in the form of data or minds, is readily available if we can sift through what is available. Therefore, theoretically, concepts exist they simply need to be crafted. Which leads me to what Dr. Jason Fox said:  “I worry about the curse of efficiency.” Once again, paradoxically, the conceptual age is all about the effective use of time. That may sound very similar to efficiency and therein lies the greatest enemy of the Conceptual Age.

How people view time. Efficient time or effective time or a greater “efficacy of time.”

The world has, does and will revolve around ideas. Technology will simply distribute, analyze and amplify ideas. In this case, concepts. This may paradoxically seem both time efficient and time inefficient. In other words, we will get the pieces of the concept faster and faster and, yet, coalescing the appropriate pieces into a meaningful concept will take longer & longer.

Will we be patient enough for the Conceptual Age? Regardless. I continue to believe there is a bigger idea found in just the idea of The Conceptual Age. One which captures the nexus of technology & humans & meaning.

What may help us in our Time war is that, conceptually, concept thinking is motivating. Its action in thinking. Instead of linear problem solving it is more like gathering disparate puzzle pieces and arranging them into a cohesive, or coherent, shape. We may be motivated to concept (think) slower.

The challenge to the Conceptual Age (beyond time).

Concepts, at their core, embrace tension or a paradox (not a dilemma). While a dilemma forces an either/or a paradox, and a concept, synergizes all components of tension into an idea/action/product/plan.

The trouble is when organizations are faced with these competing demands, they often tend to choose one or the other, compromise between them, or attempt to reconcile them. This happens for many reasons, but I would suggest the overriding reason is that business people constantly attempt to simplify a complex reality. Most of us embrace it because, well, people have a general tendency to see the world in black and white terms, which is a false dichotomy (Scandinavian Journal of Management).

Even trickier (worse) when you consider what John Dewey said: “there is no such thing as a final settlement because every settlement introduces the conditions of some degree of a new unsettling.” Concepts are never settled. They are always evolving.

————–

“Sureness will always elude you. The detective will always circle around what he wants, never seeing it whole.  We do not go on despite this. We go on because of it.”

Sara Gran

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The Conceptual Age.

The best way I can visualize the Conceptual Age is by leveraging the Swiss Cheese Model , but for concepts and not crisis/accidents.

The Swiss Cheese model highlights accidents occur when hazards align. In my mind, conversely, the optimal concepts can be found when an alignment of ‘organizational depth moving pieces ‘(aspects of business are constantly in motion but at different speeds – fast, medium fast, medium slow, slow & unmoving) is recognized , articulated and acted upon.

Conceptual thinking comes in all sizes (venti, tall, grande), but I will suggest the largest value segments:

Structural

Or

Transactional

———————

Pillars

Or

Opportunistic

The ability to discern these concepts in a timely, actionable framework AND be able to articulate in a way to assemble resources to take advantage may turn out to be the most valuable human resource a business may have. I call it ‘resource’ because it is quite possible in the future this is a human/technology combination. Technology assessing, sifting thru, “information cues” (this does not have to just be data) and highlighting probabilities as they arise with human judgment/assessment of organizational capabilities (mustering resources is accessing mental resources as well as tangible resources). In other words, articulating the varying concepts, defining the definitions, affect the way competing demands are described and how the resulting tensions are dealt with.

Lastly.

The effect on ‘knowledge workers’ and managers. Whenever we speak of ‘thinking conceptually’ there is a belief this is for the ‘intellectual elite’ (the eggheads). It is not. It will affect everyone and it should, if properly embraced, affect everyone in a business.

1. I disagree with many future of work experts. I don’t believe managers will become obsolete in world of automation/AI. Managers are the connective tissue in organizations. In fact. I see managers as integral to any transformation from efficiency to effectiveness. I actually see them as the cornerstone of the Conceptual Age.
2. All jobs will be reshaped by technology and all jobs will play a role in the Conceptual Age (Mike Walsh: design work).
   

In the end.

The Conceptual Age has emerged from not only the emergence of technology in business, but also the challenges to conventional wisdom from science, philosophy and knowledge. I would suggest people, mindful of the of the overarching issues with business (lack of moral leadership, hierarchy control limitations, diminished meaning and engagement in tasks and work) and aided by the easy movement of ideas created by technology, in a larger narrative, the Conceptual Age is seeking a new understanding of a human-centric world. The Conceptual Age will be a cornucopia of ideas, some of them contradictory, but will be defined by reason, conceptual thinking and, inevitably, how those concepts inspire progress.

I do believe The Conceptual Age is going to be an equal opportunity employer. And I think Concepts are the products with the highest value in the future. To me, this is the future of business. Ponder.

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originally written Fall of 2018

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“I suppose in the end it’s almost too easy to look back and say what you should have done, how you might have changed things.

What’s harder – what’s much, much harder – is to accept what you actually did do.”

Peter Hook

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Well. Suffice it to say 99.9% of us have a nasty habit of going back over ground we have tread before. Again and again.

We retrace our steps as if we could not only have actually chosen a different path or stopped and smelled the roses or hurried past something a little faster, but also if we had done all those things, well, things would be different in the here & now.

We all do it. It’s kind of natural.

Why? Because it is easy <in a hard way>.

While it is hard, as in ruefully painful at times, to think about the ‘shoulds’; it is easy to see the ‘shoulds.’ And we convince ourselves in that going back and revisiting these things we will be better in the future <because we convince ourselves it will make us smarter>.

In many ways this revisiting of decisions is a version of not really accepting what we did.

That said. Here is some truth. Some real, but unfortunate, truth.

99% of these things you should have done were done with best intentions, best viewing of the situation at hand and, most likely, in the range of best decisions available.

99% of these things you should have done are most likely viewed through a lens which incorporates the contextual ripples that surrounded it at that time <which are almost impossible to see within any moment as it happens> as well as the ripples of time since that moment <which are difficult to envision within any moment>.

99% of these things you should have done only appear to be ‘should have dones’ because you assume the path from that choice & decision would have remained the same as current history.

Oh. And that last 99% is 100% wrong.

Each pebble you drop in a pond is slightly different sized, dropped ever so slightly differently and hits the pond ever so slightly in a different way … all of which sends out a different ripple effect than the original.

Suffice it to say that Time & Life is neither linear nor impervious to other actions.

Oh. The other thing to remember is that 99% of the time you do not really have to retrace your steps to know what you should have done. Whether you realize it or not, in our heads our memory does a pretty fantastic job of taking a picture of moments like that and stores them in your mental photo library.

99% of us see crossroad moments exactly as cross road moments and recognize they have the potential for should haves and store them away. We need not revisit or retrace, we know them subconsciously and reassess them should we cross another similar crossroad moment. You need not examine and tear apart and have angst over the moment viewing it thread by thread in the tapestry of the moment.

Suffice it to say 99% of everything you will need is already stored away in your pea like brain and will naturally arise 99% of the time it should.

Now. It is hard to accept all of which I have written. And maybe 99% of us will chafe at it, maybe ridicule it, possibly oppose it and, yet, will eventually, finally, find it self evident.

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“All truth passes through three stages.

First, it is ridiculed.

Second, it is violently opposed.

Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.”

Arthur Schopenhauer

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Truth, in Life and in decision and choices, is, well, truth. And just as truth is sometimes not self-evident in the moment, as with most things in Life, truth always resides as simply ‘it is so’ with the things you have done.

This is the ‘truth’ that 99% of the time is the … well … the just ‘it is so’ aspect:

You do your best.

You make the best decisions you can.

You accept what you did as neither stupid nor smart, but rather the best in that time and place.

That last, my friends, is a simple definition for ‘acceptance.’

And because of what I just said 99% of the time you should just accept what you actually did and not invest time going back over ‘should haves’ and instead invest that 99% of your time moving forward or making some progress.

Well. That last thought is hard. It is difficult.

Accepting what you have done, the bad and the good, is difficult. Accepting that you have learned that lesson in the moment and do not have to retrace steps to ‘really learn’ is difficult.

All I can really say is accepting what you have done, the bad and the good, is actually a lighter burden than carrying along a shitload of ‘should haves.’

Acceptance is a light load and makes you nimbler for the future. And if that isn’t the ultimate argument for acceptance I don’t know what is because in today’s world having some agility to adapt may be the single most survival skill anyone can have. And maybe that is my point. Accepting what you actually did do comes back to one simple phrase: “I survived.” Retracing steps can never change that fact. And I would bet 99% of us have stored away everything to do with our survival. Ponder.

Note:

I did not research this so the 99% is made up.

But I have 90% confidence that it is within the realm of factual truth — in business as well as in Life.

Remember. I am a cynical optimist.

——–

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“Sometimes the solution is to rebuild your house. Sometimes, it’s to set your house on fire.”

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“The future is not just about inventing disruptive technology; it is about reimagining human experiences.”

Mike Walsh

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Business is infamous for doing the bare minimum to change and saying they have done something big. There are more Frankenstein businesses, business that have plugged in, bolted on and rewired things, than any other business shape in the universe. I get incredibly annoyed with business mostly because I do not know one business NOT interested in progress, innovation and improvement and yet they increasingly adopt things in the name of those things that, for all practical purposes, don’t really do shit to improve the model. I could argue that while intentions are good the attempts are almost all buried under ROI, measurement and some impractical ways of judging the isolated choice (but that’s a different piece for a different day). Sometimes we forget technology, or whatever ‘thing’ we are injecting into the business, is a means to an end & the end is more important than the means. And while I understand what I am discussing is “investment” and wasting investment is a big problem in the world we live in, it doesn’t mean we necessarily have to know what the goal is for every step we take. Sometimes we do things that are not directly connected and, yet, are still significant. Business, if we are honest, is a gambler’s game.

Which leads me to disruption.

Disruption, one of the most bastardized words & concepts today, occurs by rearranging the conventional status quo, in the box, in unconventional ways so people benefit. The truth is that constraints drive imagination to work toward the meaningful, not the meaningless. In my mind … things like the elements are innovations which I like to call ‘portals to discovery.” They are the incredibly small discoveries which enable huge discoveries.

I admit. I struggle to find big disruptive fires, more typically we find, well, a campfire has become a ‘fire’ and it is burning some shit down. All revolutions, disruptions, seem to accelerate out of a blob of mistrials, missteps, overlooked innovations poorly articulated up to that point or conventional which has been plodding along. Culture often eventually just embraces an idea. You always have an opportunity to disrupt the systems – the systems of society and culture. But you cannot disrupt a system while you contribute to it. you have to choose contributing or disrupting.”

Which leads me to rebuilding or setting fire.

Business is inevitably about people, not things. Which leads me to suggest business is about campfires. What I mean by that is if you look around your business you will see people gathering around campfires. Metaphorically this means some people gather around things for some reason – to listen to a story, to be with likeminded people, to do something that keeps them ‘warm.’ The reasons are many, not one.

The dynamics of an organization revolve around groups and individuals and campfires (or fires in general). The functions of these little campfires span, shared values, common assumptions, shared goals, permitting smaller group agendas to contribute to both individual interests and collective good. But fires are fires and while they can be fostered separately, if there is a spread in one place, we can expect to see it manifested elsewhere (sometimes in unexpected ways). We are all part of a group WITHIN the group in a system and any significant improvement cannot be solved in isolation. I would argue sincerely improving any business is playing with fire and you either set the fire or learn to rebuild from a fire made of its own making (which is usually a campfire within your system that has just grown out of control for a variety of reasons).

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Every organization must be prepared to abandon everything it does to survive in the future.”

Peter Drucker in 1999

Which leads me to why burning shit down is a good thing.

My favorite example of burning shit down is Moscow and Napoleon. But the truth is most businesses see fire as dangerous, a failure in some way, and it is rarely fostered and more often squelched. Fires, in many cases, is simply a reflection of a failure in the system, but this type of failure is the system unable to handle an emergent opportunity, or innovation, or whatever is frying the system as it tries to rebuild and gain some momentum for this ‘new thing’ that doesn’t fit within the status quo. This type of failure should actually be viewed with joy by business people, not a failure. It is proof that uncertainty is our constant companion and friend and we can discard the illusion that some best practice, some process, some tried & true system, is what will sustain us in the future. embracing having shit burn down means, in some way, we are freed from the false expectations that if we were only smart enough, had some specific experience, knew some management ‘myth’, we would have been able to build something fireproof. That’s silly. You either embrace shit being burned down or you will get burned. To be clear. This does not mean a lack of direction just that we should learn to respect uncertainty and randomness and some of the gambler’s game that always exists in business and that fire can actually clear the way. This isn’t disruption. This isn’t any nonsensical word. It is simply, well, reimagining human experiences as Mike Walsh noted upfront. Like gathering around campfires and such. Ponder.

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“I am free and lost in this freedom

Do you know what I mean by that?”

Ingeborg Bachmann

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Freedom, in and of itself, is quite possibly the most valuable privilege one can have in the world.

Freedom, in and of itself, may be one of the most misunderstood and least understood ideas in the world.

Freedom, in and of itself, may be one of the most appealing concepts in the world.

Freedom, in and of itself, once attained may be one of the most difficult concepts, as an individual, to manage in the world.

Freedom, once truly given, can be a scary prospect to wield responsibly and well.

Freedom is one of those things that should make you think long and hard about what, exactly, do you want? But, yet, many of us do not. And we should. We should because, at its core, freedom is about liberty of self and what you want. I believe it was John Stuart Mill who stated that the individual “is the person most interested in his own well-being,” and that the “ordinary man or woman has means of knowledge immeasurably surpassing those that can be possessed by any one else.”

What this suggests is that, while freedom may have some societal demands and constraints, the real ‘rule of freedom’ comes from within each individual and, well, responsibility.

Within?

No fences. No boundaries. Not even a public compass … just one that resides in yourself. Well. This would suggest it could become easy to get lost.

Look. I am not suggesting society would ever permit all of us to actually decide how we wanted to define freedom for our own lives and live our Life in that self-defined way without any repercussions <and there would have to be as each of us pursued ‘our own wellbeing’ to the possible detriment of the ‘greater we’>.

However. Because you can view from such a personal standpoint and a self interest standpoint, it can become incredibly easy to start seeing your own path as <a> the path everyone else should be walking on and <b> the path which reflects the best definition of how freedom should be viewed. In that, well, it can become incredibly easy to get lost within your own views of what is freedom and how you may choose to use your freedom.

I tend to believe freedom is freeing AND constricting at exactly the same time. In addition. The only way to enjoy freedom is to actually do something with it and not just talk about it or enjoy it.

Yeah.

The secret to not being suffocated by freedom is the ability to use that freedom to create something <not simply being free>. Please note I say ‘create’ not destroy. Anyway. I imagine another way of saying that is you can suffocate by not doing anything <or not choosing to choose to use your freedom>.

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“The ability to convert ideas to things is the secret of outward success.”

Henry Ward Beecher

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Ah. Therein lies the rub. Create from freedom.

Sometimes that can seem like creating something from nothing. Freedom encourages ideas and thinking but then … uh oh … Life kind of demands you convert your access to freedom into ‘something.’ It is within that ‘demand from Life’ where most people abuse freedom — people choose not to choose.

Now. We do this all the time – choose not to choose. Oddly enough, a shitload of people think this is actually exercising your freedom. Go figure. Not doing something is an expression of freedom.

<scratching my head here>

Some people argue this is an excellent way that we exercise our freedom and flex our choice-making muscles. Either we actually do not make a choice at all or we delegate the choice-making to someone else <sometimes an expert – doctor, banker, service provider> or we just delegate the choice making into the “to be done later” file. In general, we have good intentions. We do this because we do not want to invest the energy and  time to make a ‘right decision’ <this actually becomes ‘not choosing’, or using your freedom, because of fear of not making the right choice … or using your freedom properly>. And, yes, it is ‘good intentions’ to intentionally avoid making a bad decision.

Sure. Using the overall excuse of “I am too busy” choosing not to choose can often seem to be the best choice because it can sometimes appear to then free us up to do something else. Personally I call bullshit on this type of thinking.

Freedom kind of has two levers or maybe an “on/off” switch … opt in or opt out. Either use your freedom or don’t use it. You either value your choice or you don’t. There really isn’t a lot of room in-between. And, yeah, people will argue with me on this, but I am stating it this way because while freedom can far too often look abstract, in reality, in practice, it is anything but abstract.

Doing, action, is at the core of freedom itself.

I have traveled the world and seen freedom and no freedom.

I have traveled the world and seen the arguments and debates and fights over freedom itself <my freedom versus your freedom>.

But here is the deal.

The opportunity to choose is not all that matters. I say that because far too many people who actually have the opportunity <a> do not exercise their freedoms or <b> get bogged down on the debate & conflict of my freedom versus your freedom. Choosing is what matters where freedom is concerned.

That said. As I have said before, surprisingly, freedom is tough. And it is even tougher because you may never really know if you have used your freedom well or wisely.

But here is what I do know.

It will be how you use your freedom which will be immortalized. And, yes, everyone is immortalized. Either through your forgetfulness or lack of memorability or lack of choice or doing something or how you cannot be forgotten or memorability through how you used your freedom and the choices you made. I say that because immortality will be the stories that are told about what you did with your freedom. That will be the final judge. Ponder that <because I think it is important>.

Hmmmmmmmmmmm … maybe that is why we get both lost and free within freedom. Given freedom we tend to hug tightly to any boundaries we find for fear of getting lost. But, assuming we actually ‘do shit’ and make choices using our freedom more and more we start to get a feel for those boundaries and begin pushing them out. Simplistically we push them further and further away from ourselves. At some point if we push them far enough it will feel like there are no boundaries and yet we do not feel lost.

I imagine that is what some people would call “freedom.” Seeing boundaries yet pushing against them to stretch what can “be”. And, yes, I also imagine that it feels good. So. Ponder this: If you have freedom, use it wisely.

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“When you do something noble and beautiful and nobody notices, do not be sad.

For the sun every morning is a beautiful spectacle and yet most of the audience still sleeps.”

John Lennon

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“I desire the things which will destroy me in the end.”

Sylvia Plath 

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“All sins are attempts to fill voids.”

Simone Weil 

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Well. We all know at least one person who is always trying too hard. Or maybe they always seem to be overcompensating for something. Or even that they know they are ‘not as good as’ and spend far too much time trying to convince everyone they are at least better than maybe we know they are at something.

We like these people because we like the overall sense that someone is dissatisfied with the present person and seeking a better person.

We don’t like these people because we don’t like the overall sense of desperation and the trappings that often come with it.

We look at these people and … well … we think about ourselves and the crazy shit we do.

Let’s face it. Life makes us do a lot of crazy shit.

Okay. It doesn’t actually “make” us. It just full-throatedly encourages us to do some crazy shit.

It does so because it makes us desire  a shitload of things that can chip away at the better version of ourselves. And by better version I don’t mean external stuff but internal stuff … soul, integrity & character. But life has a nasty habit of encouraging us to think more about external stuff than internal stuff.

The size of your bank account.

How you look and what you wear and whether you sport Gap or Brooks Brothers.

The size of your house and whether you have gold drapes or Pier1 window hangings.

This kind of crap can screw you up let alone destroy you. You can get so caught up in what Life is whispering in your ear as what is important over time that is all you can hear and see.

Life becomes almost a parody of itself.

‘Less is more’ becomes the mantra of everything but to you, personally, where ‘more’ just seems to look less & less. Life can twist you into a pretzel trying to match up with all the external trappings of what it suggests you should desire. And as you get twisted all it really does is squeeze out character & integrity & principles drop by drop as Life twists harder and harder.

And as you get this squeezed out of you, well, you will naturally get thirsty.  Therein lies the big Life choice: what do you drink?

What do I mean?

Remember that kid you knew growing up who was always the bully, always the exaggerator, always the one trying so hard to show everyone how great they were? Well. At some point they realize that they are thirsty. Either thirsty for more or thirsty for what is getting squeezed out of them.

Now. That said. Don’t think Life is standing by silently.  All the while Life will whisper sweet nothings in that kid’s ear telling them what to drink to stay on their path to a ‘better person’ <and it is most likely the sweetest, least healthy alternative>.

Look. At some point we all get thirsty, even that young bully, and your Life gets energized by what you choose to drink <and I could suggest you get addicted to what you drink at a fairly early age>.

That said.

What I do know is that almost all of us end up being constantly nudged to believe we neither have enough nor are we enough.

And it is within those ‘not enough’ spaces, the voids if you wish to call them, in which we commit our gravest sins.

We commit our sins most often as we overreach.

Okay. We are tempted to overreach — in our words, our resumes, our successes, even our recaps of our ‘what we did today’ lists.

Some overreach more than others, but, we all get tempted. And, just as I noted above, it is explainable and understandable. When Life is trying to constantly tell you ‘not enough’ you will constantly be trying to showcase ‘more than enough.’ That is a natural response.

And this is where people separate themselves into two basic generalized groups:

those who define how they matter <enough> by an internal balance sheet

versus

those who define how they matter <enough> by an external balance sheet.

I am not suggesting it has to be 100%, internal or external, because most of us figure out how to commit as few ‘sins’ as possible and try and manage what they desire in a way they don’t ultimately get destroyed by their desires. Most of us figure out our ‘best version’ is pretty good; maybe less than some but more than others.

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“And so we all matter – maybe less than a lot, but always more than some.”

John Green

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But some people truly do end up in the 100% column.

It is quite possible someone like the Pope is close to the internal 100% judgement, but I imagine a lot of people actually slide close to this Life self-framing. It comes with some external expenses, but a shitload of people are willing to sacrifice those things because they know the gold curtains fade, the money can be lost and the houses can burn down.  External trappings can only provide so much comfort.

On the other end of the spectrum are the hollow people. They look glitzy. They sound confident <if not arrogant or blowhards>. They have all the trappings of success. But their sacrifice is whatever internal compass that can guide goodness or true fairness as well as empathy & compassion. They have sacrificed counting internal cues because external cues are all that count.  All the while they are trying too hard, seem to be overcompensating for something and spending a shitload of time trying to convince everyone they are at least better than maybe we know they are at something. They fill their spaces with sins and laud them as virtues.

All that said. We all know at least one person who is always trying too hard.

This is the person who desires the things which will destroy me in the end.

This is the person whose sins are attempts to fill voids.

This is the person we know, & often wish we could change, but is quite possibly the most unchangeable person we know.

We all have voids.

We just need to be very very careful that what we fill that void with doesn’t destroy us in the end.

Ponder.

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“It was the in-between time, before day leaves and night comes, a time I’ve never been partial to because of the sadness that lingers in the space between going and coming.”

Sue Monk Kidd

—— 

“Ambiguity of language is philosophy’s main source of problems.

That is why it is of the utmost importance to examine attentively the very words we use.”  

Giuseppe Peano

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Fear of being misunderstood. If you type that into google you get about 159,000,000 results in 0.42 seconds and only one, yes, one result is about the version I am talking about. The version today is not being misunderstood as a person, but, literally, not being understood when speaking or communicating something. That said. I did find the term ambiguphobia which is applied to the pathological fear of being misunderstood. It has the same word root as “ambiguous.”

Ambiguity.

If you elect to believe the world is often ambiguous, complex not simple, that cause & effect (98% of the time) is nonexistent, and truth is more often conditional not absolute, you are doomed to have a fear of being misunderstood. This fear may be constant or intermittent or maybe even like a flux capacitor, but it exists in some form or fashion.

I thought about this after listening to a Jason Fox podcast where he kind of flippantly mentioned he had a fear of being misunderstood and read a piece he linked to at Ribbon Farm “The Tragicomic Exasperations of Expertise.”

Here is what I believe.

If you elect to believe the world is complex and simplicity is elusive, you spend a lot of time in the wretched hollow between:

Certainty versus uncertainty

Absolute truths versus contingent truths

Pragmatism versus dreams

Short term versus long term

Safety versus risk

Old beliefs versus new understandings

Fixed versus unfixed

Fluid versus solid

If you reside in the complex universe, you will find your cozy cottage resides in this windswept, stormy grassy hollow. And I would suggest you also spend a lot of time in the kitchen of the cottage mixing ingredients seeking the perfect potion to make the complex understood. I would also suggest this is the wretched hollow – continual experimentation of ingredients.

“<things> get better when exposed to external stressors and change.”

Dr. Jason Fox

That said. If you elect to believe the world is complex, let me suggest two thoughts for you to ponder about this wretched hollow in terms of ‘fear of being misunderstood’:

Wretched hollow version 1: where ideas go to die

If you have decided to reside in the complex universe, suffice it to say you have decided to be in the thinking & ideas business. While your skillset may have some aspects of ‘doing’ and results, you have put a stake in the ground that progress is dependent upon people thinking about shit and in that thinking will better navigate a way toward success.

In other words you have inextricably linked thinking to progress. This is important because in this version of the wretched hollow this is where ideas go to die if you are misunderstood.

In other words. You are in the thinking and ideas business (a version of the ‘Progress Business’) and if you are not understood your thinking and ideas die. Uhm. No more business and certainly no progress (or at least your version of it).

This is a pragmatic fear of being misunderstood. The product you want to sell, not being understood, is not bought.

I will note here this is where I believe business people, experience, has an advantage over academics & thought leaders. In business if you cannot make uncertainty certain enough or the invisible esoteric thinking visible enough, you die. You become a superfluous thinker who doesn’t know how to get things done or, in general, no one knows what to do with what you say & think. You are simply mental masturbation.

Wretched hollow version 2: where ‘self’ goes to die

Doubt, Imposter Syndrome, confidence, even arrogance wander in this wretched hollow. Fear of being misunderstood haunts not just your ideas and thinking, but you. This is the world you have elected to be in. Others have chosen detail, you have chosen definitions.

By choosing the path of definitions, versus details, you have, psychologically, purposefully placed yourself in a constant tug of war between all of the things I just stated. Your only real contribution to the tug of war is to continuously eat up more and more knowledge in the attempt to put more weight on the positive side of the tug of war. Unfortunately, knowledge weighs less, proportionately, than doubt/uncertainty, or even ignorance, so even as you become more smart, wiser, & better at articulating the Sumo wrestler sized doubts (the actual fear of being misunderstood) never lose any weight and keep tugging.

My point here is that electing to reside in the complex universe and making your business the business of thinking & ideas is a non-stop, never-ending tug of war. So. You are in the game or you are not. And if you are worth half a shit you will find that you never lose the tug of war, the other side just tugs a little harder on occasion. But. And this is a big but. The moment you stop pulling the fear of being misunderstood changes to death of the universe you have elected to live in and even the business you have elected to be in. I know that sounds harsh, but ‘self’ has some pretty dark places and if you give up the rope it is really really hard to not only climb back out of the darkness, but also get a new strong grip on the rope in the tug of war. Just ponder because even if you do not agree with me in totality on this point even at a lesser degree it has repercussions to fear of being misunderstood.

Let me end this version of wretched hollow by pointing out that if you have elected to make thinking & ideas your business, and you struggle to make people understand your thinking & ideas, you will inevitably start questioning the value & meaning you provide. Period. Full stop.

“Aiming at brevity, I become obscure.”

Horace

Lastly.

Mixing the formula.

That’s the deal, isn’t it? Finding the right amount of certainty, tangible understanding, to freedom (uncertainty) ratio? It’s the proportionate amount of traction points (I call them lily pads of certainty) to provide structure to hold up the uncertain, freedom and adaptability of thinking, in people’s minds (leading to them actually doing something). I say that because that’s where the fear of being misunderstood centers itself – will I mix the right formula this time?

This is where Life gets tricky.

All people inherently need some successes or, well, you go into some pretty dark places. So your natural instincts arc toward ‘being understood.’ That means offering up simplicity, maybe some tasty soundbites and, often, some fairly vapid generalizations attempting to tap into some common perceptions. That means you incrementally shave away at complexity which, inherently, shaves away truths and impact/effectiveness <you have slipped down the slippery slope of the bastardization of occam>. That means, while you have elected to reside in the universe of complexity, you are selling out the value of that universe (I would argue that diminishes self but that’s not my point today).

I will say (part 1) the people in this space with the most success not only constantly gain knowledge, but use it in a ‘play, pause, rewind, fast forward’ way. What I mean by that is the formula cannot be rushed and neither can complexity understanding be completed in a formulaic way. In other words it not only takes an ability to assemble the right fragments, but do so with pacing to engage cognitively.

“Be still amidst the chaos and active in repose.”

Indira Ghandi

I will say (part 2) that the tricksters, and ignorant, who casually ease round simplistic pegs into uneven hexagon complex holes exponentially outnumber the experts. And you know what? People, in general, like round pegs.  Smooth, simple and easy to grasp. This does not mean people are stupid just that tricksters are masters of the illusion, and delusion, of progress and the doyens of detail. In general, they thrive on detail cloaked in fortune cookie wisdom. It’s simplistic, not simple, and its horrible for us, society and business.

And maybe that is where I should end. The fear of being misunderstood is really about knowing, in your heart of hearts, you have chosen the rockier path as two roads diverge and, well:

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

Fear of being misunderstood is all about fear of choices – have I made the right one, or ones, and in doing so have I made myself clear of why the roads are what the roads are and why as they diverge we should walk on this one today.

Fear of being misunderstood is all about making the choice to making the complex understood.

Fear of being misunderstood is all about the choice that progress is actually made through the complex rather than simplicity.

Fear of being misunderstood is all about fear people do not understand the choice you made.

Regardless. There is a positive side.

Progress is not a linear process. Mastering complexity or at least wrangling complexity insures not only progress, but antifragile progress and progress with value. I will never suggest fear is a good thing, but I will say that when you get it right, when you share the thinking and ideas and it is understood, and your fear of being misunderstood is absolved for at least that moment – it is a great feeling. And it’s a great feeling not because you have been understood, but rather because by being understood energy has been created, or traction provided, for progress to occur. Ponder.

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(1) Why has economic advance become and remained so compelling a goal to all of us as individuals, even though it yields disappointing fruits when most, if not all of us, achieve it?

Fred Hirsch, Social Limits to Growth

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“But, in the end, even pirates understood that true freedom still required governance amongst themselves.”

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“I am making out a case for the sort of person who is in sympathy with the fundamental aims of Socialism, but who in practice always takes flight when Socialism is mentioned. Question a person of this type and you will often get the semi-frivolous answer: ‘I don’t object to Socialism, but I do object to Socialists.’ Logically it is a poor argument, but it carries weight with many people.”

George Orwell

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I find myself in a number of conversations about capitalism in which I have to explain the essence of capitalism is capitalizing. To be clear there are two sides to this capitalizing coin. One side means we are growers and when we are positively capitalizing, we are seeing opportunities and innovations to make the world better and do things that help make life better and capitalize on them.  Literally and figuratively, this is a huge thought and I would argue that falls more on the side where the balance on ‘collective good’ is proportionally higher than self-interest good. The other side of the coin is more a zero-sum aspect. Extracting and exploiting to capitalize on market opportunities. I would argue that is more on the side where the balance is on self-interest good is proportionally higher, if not solely, than collective interest good. I would argue the current business world resides mostly in the latter.

Which leads me to nouns and verbs.

I begin here because what that means is I have changed the discussion from a noun, capitalism, to a verb, capitalizing. This is incredibly important because while many people want to deconstruct capitalism as a system, I want to deconstruct HOW humans do capitalism. In other words, how they choose to capitalize within a system fostering business and innovation. If you believe things can be transformed through capitalism, then maybe you should invest some energy exploring the capitalizing aspect. Well. that’s what I think. I don’t begrudge rich people for being rich, I just crucify the rich over how they have capitalized on their opportunities to gain their rich status. The reality is there should be two main things people should talk about when debating the merits and flaws of capitalism:

1. Individuals who use the system to their objectives

2. Businesses, institutions, who manipulate the system to their objectives

I stated the two things that way to make a point. Capitalizing always has an objective. Capitalizing is using, manipulating, managing, abusing <whatever word you choose> the system to meet that objective. I would be remiss if I didn’t point out to the holier-than-thou Purpose folk that Purpose is an objective <within capitalism> and what really matters is how the business goes about the business of capitalizing, toward that objective, that really matters. As a follow-up to that sentence let’s also note that the individuals doing that how and the institutions modeling themselves to do that how are human beings thinking through the ‘how to capitalize’, i.e., its is not the system we should be redesigning, but rather have your design eyes on the humans working with the system.  What I am fairly confident in saying is that most companies have not come around to the idea that after years of making money from unethical, or hollow behavior, and unsustainable practices, and do not truly believe they have to dramatically change what they are doing to fit the demands of a ‘changing world’. Oh. They may change some of the words around the objectives and they may even make efforts to change the production & process aspects of doing business <digital transformation would be the prime example here> but basically their version of how to capitalize on market opportunities, extracting & exploiting what they need to attain desired growth objectives, will not dramatically change. That said. I imagine my larger point is that capitalism is capitalism, but capitalizing is never just capitalizing. What I just shared matters because capitalism has certainly vastly improved our lives and our means to live, but has also fed a certain human insatiability.

Which leads me to the capitalizing battle between self-interest and collective interest.

“The cold truth is that the individualist creed of everybody for himself and the devil take the hindmost is principally responsible for the distress which Western Civilization finds itself.”

Charles Beard in early 1900’s

Some guy named Sandel wrote “what money can’t buy … the moral limits of markets” after pointing out:

• the more things money can buy the more the lack of it hurts.
• buying and selling can change the way a good is perceived (he used “giving children money as incentive to read a book may make reading a chore rather than a simple pleasure”).

This all leads to an overall attitude that endless <and double digit> growth is essential to maintain and improve our quality of life. While I will not go into the detailed debate about growth, that attitude is simply not true <it is the typical efficiency versus effectiveness argument> with regard to reality. This is a perception/attitude problem.

Today’s capitalism has veered toward an individualistic orientation – a ‘me’ accumulation game. And this is where we inevitably dive into self-interest versus collective interest. It was Tocqueville who suggested America embodied “self-interest rightly understood”. I would argue that over time the tension between individual & collective interests has bifurcated into a warped either/or. What I mean by that is industrialization encouraged I’s (individuals) to begin believing the company <which is actually a profits-sustaining non-human entity> was the “I” and business took that idea and embedded it in a culture of “we are in this together” and encouraged everyone it was a zero-sum game business world. So “I” got warped and then it became a bit of a “business is war” world instead of a 4 Musketeer world < all for one and one for all> society. I am not going to suggest some utopian vision, but we are talking about capitalizing and in a capitalism world in which everyone was capitalizing the right way not only would there be profits for all <not equal, but for all> there would also be no such thing as systemic issues so there would be minimal poverty, no healthcare crisis, no retirement crisis, no senior care crisis, no childcare crisis. What I mean by that is part of capitalizing in a capitalism is the hard decisions and sacrifices that society, business and individuals have to make – not at the sacrifice of profits for Purpose, but rather because the collective good is in the best interest of the self-interest of the individual <ponder that thought for a bit>.

We need to make some of these hard decisions because capitalizing chases dollars, not needs, leading to a moral scarcity with an abundance of purchasable choices (some of need, many of want, and a large percentage with questionable real benefits). Yes. Capitalizing, limited in any morality of collective good, ceases to build some common values into everyday value and everyday lives and, in fact, diminishes little by little what is embedded with time and the system encourages corrosive individualistic orientated behavior where individual behavior is associated with individual advantage. This means in a zero-sum world society gets eroded one person capitalizing at a time. But there is even a worse consequence. The absence of social values makes it a transactional consumption world in which the only regulations/boundaries are ‘fairness consumption guidelines’ not actual control of the market with an eye toward societal needs/values. This means capitalizing is driven by institutions focused on matching ‘hedonic tendencies’ motivated by individual aims. To be clear, this does not mean individuals are immoral (or even amoral), but that in this capitalizing mindset morality is, for the most part, in the hands of the individual and not the one producing things for the individual – buyers choose, but sellers shape through choice architecture (with inordinate power). The issue here then becomes (a) the size of the institutions exhibit hollow moralistic behavior suffocates anything any one individual can choose and (b) historical hollow behavior embedded over time warps an individual’s view of what a moralistic choice is. And even then, I have to point out that the root of all these macro societal issues is that how one individual behaves matters. In fact, it is almost all that matters. So. If that is so, and the individuals have become more ignorant than the system itself, how does a market behave well? I am certainly not suggesting everyone is ignorant, but in an individualistic oriented society, attached to a zero-sum belief, the probability of individuals behaving less than optimal WITHIN the market increases significantly. So maybe rather than work the system, we should work the people.

Which leads me to today’s flawed version of capitalizing.

“Capitalizing” as a verb, has been hijacked by the fact Americans simultaneously lost the vision of a common greater good, the capacity to see the union as larger than the sum of its parts, and, the belief that a common good was what makes America great.  It is not a great leap for me to suggest that it seems like business is an age of cultural, moral and ideological vacuum <beyond making money/profit> which means that society has nothing to fall back on other than, well, money or accumulation to fill that void and, well, money chooses how it wants to live. As a consequence, instead of thinking of the future (with any meaningful thought) nothing exists or matters, but the present. This is a derivative of an individualistic ideology in that a collective cares about the future, but the individual focuses on optimizing/maximizing the present. The materialistic considerations of this existence provide, at best, tepid comfort and at worst, a cold hollow comfort. But that is where the state of ‘capitalizing’ is at the moment.

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‘In the day we sweat it out on the streets of a runaway American dream …’

It’s a ‘death trap,’ a ‘suicide rap.’  I want to guard your dreams and visions.”

Born to Run

Think about this generalization about the ‘winners’ in capitalism – they didn’t get that way from being generous, but via ruthlessness. In unrestrained capitalizing, competition is king, and to outdo your competitors and become the most powerful involves having the cash to invest in things like research and development, expansion, marketing, lobbying etc. as well as cutting corners, paying employees the minimum, maybe some stock manipulation and unethical behavior topped of legions of lawyers to push the absolute limits of what you can get away with to grow. Because if you don’t do it, someone else will and they become the ‘winner’ instead of you. I imagine I am suggesting that the business issue of the day is that there is no such thing as an ethical capitalizer. Yes. I know that is a generalization, but directionally speaking I feel fairly comfortable with that statement.

Which leads me to the verb: capitalizing.

Capitalizing is active, a coherent accumulation of actions. I have purposefully focused on individuals rather than the system, or system changes, because in this case the capitalizing system (the incentives, constructs, feedback loops, etc) is crafted by humans. So. Whatever people make they can unmake.

I admit this is tricky. One could argue we the individuals are stuck in a bigger system we can’t control nor really know how to navigate successfully. Basically, we are a reflection of the system institutions in society that create us or at minimum shape us. But I inevitably turned back to what Donella Meadows asked and limits of growth “How good a human nature does society permit?” to which I add “how good a human nature does business permit” for I believe if business permits the best of human nature, society will inevitably arc toward a better nature itself. That, in a nutshell, is about capitalizing in a capitalism.

My belief is that human nature is inherently being conscious of the collective, but the ‘capitalizing narrative’ suffocates that consciousness. So, I would argue this is the first step is effectively integrating self-interest into collective interest. If you are conscious, aware, of the whole – needs, wants, desires – you have the ability to insert your self-interests within the collective consciousness wherein you, and we, benefit. I would be remiss if I didn’t point out, hearkening back to my earlier point #1, there are less than moral people who use this exact same equation to manipulate or exploit the conscious of the collective to solely benefit their individual self-interests in capitalizing. I would also be remiss if I didn’t point out, hearkening back to point #2, there are businesses who will actively manage their ’capitalizing’ to suggest they are making the collective better when even if you squint you will never see the truth in that claim. Look. Capitalizing is inherently a void in which individuals and businesses fill because there is no rulebook <substantive ways of doing capitalizing the right way> for everyone other than maybe ethics, dignity, integrity and a number of things which we would like to be common but are actually ‘accepted across a spectrum of behavior’ items.  Vacuums, or voids, are doomed to be filled. This combined with the fact that extreme individualism comes at a cost to the collective (individuals owning and consuming more shit creates more bad shit … not just business revenue). So, the less meaning an individual has the more they will consume to fill that space (even though it isn’t an equal tradeoff). Meaning, while having an infinite value, only demands some finite things to fulfill, while consumption is theoretically infinite and the void it attempts to fill is infinite in that it never can attain the highest value. In fact, that unbalanced tug of war can often lead to creating a sense of meaning despite a massive amount of empty consumption as we pluck out some meaningful out of the numerous meaningless, i.e., we build a casket for humanity with splinters of meaningfulness. I say that because capitalizing demands good human nature in order to craft the consumption/meaningfulness ratio society needs and, yes, I am suggesting capitalizing can effectively ‘distribute’ meaning. If we don’t fix, or address that, it doesn’t matter if we embrace anti-capitalism or anti-growth or anti-anything that exists today. Ponder that.

In the end. The capitalism system is unquestioning. It encourages all individuals, not just the executives, to be equally ignorant, indifferent, relatively oblivious to the meaningful consequences other than what is measured and slow to not only embrace any real changes but even to have the curiosity to explore any. But here is the god news – humans. As humans move across the capitalizing landscape, they inevitably do, well, landscaping. The landscape may want to fight back, but humans being humans relentlessly change the landscape. This has exponential positive dynamics if we look at it in a non-zero-sum game way in that in that scenario we tend to cooperate more (that collective interest thing) and things get better through cooperation, in other words, 1 + 1 = 3 (cooperation also mitigates risks). This is an important thought to end with because the truth is capitalizing is at the core of growth for individuals (it creates the spaces for potential to progress), business (it creates the profits to reinvest and innovate), community & culture (smart expansion) and society (it creates the opportunities for betterment). The question isn’t whether we should be capitalizing, but rather how we elect to capitalize. Capitalizing, cooperation and collective interest. The answer resides somewhere in there. Ponder.

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author’s note: capitalizing effects everything from how an organization should be designed to how an organization defines its vision, from how communities interact, how laws and rules are constructed and even how societies exist, therefore, while this piece tugs at some of the foundational issues the real solutions will reside in the builders – the people who will build the framework for how we work and live.

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“Americans believe in straight lines. They believe that all you have to do is get out there and get the job done one step after another. If you don’t do that, you are either lazy or incompetent.  American people seem to think that life is like a mission. That’s how they approach sports and war and sex – even love. That’s what they think when someone’s credit goes bad or there is an accident on the road.  Somebody veered off the straight and narrow. Remember Einstein. He said the connection between A and B was questionable at best and there is no such thing as a straight line.”

Craig Johnson

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Life is neither straight nor narrow (although it sure is a lot easier to think that way).

I think we all know this.

But I think we all forget it as we judge others.

Sometimes you can be hard working and extremely competent and still have some random ‘life’ accident. And be hurt. And be hurt bad enough that it becomes difficult to get back on the road.

Sorry folks, but that is true.

Life has put you on a diagonal path and sometimes you just get lost.

Also.

Because life isn’t always a straight line having an objective & a mission & a goal isn’t always a guarantee of success.

Nor is it always a measurement of success.

And maybe more importantly it isn’t a measurement of failure.

Well.

Both of those things, in isolation or combined, sure suggests navigating life is tough, doesn’t it?

It seems to make a lot of ‘extenuating circumstances’ in measuring life.

Yup.

Sorry folks <again>. But that is life.

Add in the fact that your own straight line you envision just may not be the only line to follow … oops … actually … it is NOT the only line you could follow. Well. What else can I say.

Life isn’t a mission. And it is rarely a straight line.

Nor should we always judge failure, or success, on whether someone hit some goal or objective.

Or whether they fulfilled a mission.

Oh. And not all missions are equal.

And, yeah, bad things do happen to good people.

Once again.

There are no straight lines to success or in life.

Maybe the real thought here is that all those curvy winding roads may be more difficult to navigate, and you obviously cannot go as fast as a straight line, but they can be far more interesting.

Maybe the real thought is life isn’t about lines and getting from A to B is rarely a straight and narrow line.

Maybe the real thought is we should just give people a break because while we may think we see a line, there was none and we all kind of make a lot of living Life up as we go.

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“And all of them were caught in something larger than themselves. Some of them hated the mathematics that drove them, and some were afraid, and some worshiped the mathematics because it provided a refuge from thought and from feeling. If a bank or a finance company owned the land, the owner man said, The Bank—or the Company—needs—wants—insists—must have—as though the Bank or the Company were a monster, with thought and feeling, which had ensnared them. These last would take no responsibility for the banks or the companies because they were men and slaves, while the banks were machines and masters all at the same time.”

Steinbeck in Grapes of Wrath

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“A constant focus on trying to find ways to trick users into engaging with products rather than giving them a reason to.”

Ed Zitron

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I certainly have a dubious relationship with measurement. I tend to believe business measures more out of fear than anything else. That said. Not measuring anything is stupid. But today I am just talking about how measurement shapes society and how society goes about things and the danger to all of us being measured.

What do I mean?

This leads me, first, to discuss how measurement shapes awareness.

Society is strewn with perception-driven hues. The problem with that is we, the people, are increasingly embracing an increasingly finite view of everything. It was William Blake who said “if the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, Infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees thro’ narrow chinks in his cavern.” Measurement narrows our sense gating channels that we naturally have so that our perceptions reflect a very small part of the world around us. This is where measurement comes into the picture. We tend to focus in on the small world necessary to achieve whatever particular measurement drives our awareness or drives something important to us. Yes. I am saying that measurement actually creates limitations. Basically, measurement can make a closed system of a naturally open system. Kind of a bounded rationality to bound awareness.

Measurement doesn’t allow the natural leaking of humanness <unpredictable & irrational that leads to innovation and improvements and learning> in that upsets the dream of symmetry, linear and expected. The truth is that this predictability is doomed to fail and there is an inevitable disruption to conventional wisdom if not the status quo in totality. Yeah. The measurement disrupts measurement. Despite the fact conventional approaches within a measured system, most often based on the linear analysis of cause and effect of ‘best practices’, will always fail and, yet, society continues to demand simplistic, more measurable, linear answers and solutions. Rather than embracing the unpredictability of a complex world and positively expecting continuous transformation <in a wide span of change or evolving process> society gets more and more anxious as symmetry is not only attacked, but broken. My point here is that not only is society’s awareness diminishing, but its desire for measurement is encouraging an overall “awareness objective blindness” shaping an increasingly fragile view of life and the world.

Which leads me to the second point that measurement actually shapes reality.

Counting makes things visible and visible things always count. What this eliminates is the fact that every new object clearly seen opens up new versions of perception to us. Instead, measurement is how continuity is built into the system which guides society. This also suggests the invisible really isn’t important. I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that money is easily counted therefore money becomes the measure of all things but that is a different piece for a different day.

Measurement is inevitably crafted from history, for a future outcome, and history has an incredibly solid structure of which one component is memory. Institutional misguided purposes may reign, ineffective leadership may encourage chaos, but measurement withstands the all that attempts to destroy the historical structural arc. My point here is that ‘power’ <institutions and people in control> know this and use measurement for the purposes of controlling society/people. Just ponder how this idea trickles down to the existing realities in education, entertainment, sports, social media, business and even communities. For every angst people have about a society gone awry there is very likely a measurement behind it.

Which leads me back to how measurement can hollow out humanity as it shapes humans. Measurement and its methodology, and its cousin methodology, has become a mercenary for hire within society. What measurement also does is dehumanize outcomes and output. What I mean by that is while humans have an impact on what is actually measured, they appear to have little accountability for the impact of their actions in attaining that measurement. Measurements logic is simply the measurement itself. What is astonishing about our measurement systems is how little personal decency or ethics plays a role in the reasoning of measurement. Simply, measurement shapes outcomes not decency. In fact, measurement is detached from the “how” of the objective to be attained. In this measurement world creation may demand an architect or a professor or anyone with an obsession to the detail needed to accumulate what will be measured, but who that architect or professor actually is from an ethical perspective is significantly less important. This society will inevitably find experts in measurement, not experts in morality because the measurement itself IS the logic and reason. And while what I just shared may appear to harsh a critique, at minimum, measurement invariably rewards outcomes over any real common sense or even offers a head nod to proportional application of individual morality or even substantive meaning <the outcome is expected to make workers feel meaning>. In other words, to a point I will come back to later, there is a general lack of value of content over outcome.

The impact on the individual is captured in this thought from Robert Bly: “A person suffers if he or she is constantly being forced into the statistical mentality and away from the road of feeling.”

This is what a measurement society shapes. Suffering forced into a constrained mentality to meet a specific task rather than feeling for the opportunity and possibilities of emergence.

What this means is that it does not really matter whether some technology or ‘thing’ – project, initiative, task – preserves something or destroys something in order to meet a measurement. The measurement is the justification.

Which leads me to how measurement encourages us to ignore ‘content’ in the pursuit of what is measured.

While what should matter is what it is observed to do, what it creates or destroys in order to achieve something, the reality is society cares almost exclusively on the measurement objective. I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that a society not wary of promises made to us by the designers or the ones with the material interest in the measurements is doomed to embrace a number of measures, and measurements, that will send us more and more paths hollow of moral and ethical behavior in our pursuit of ‘measurement success.’

The essence of learning whether human, machine or technology is developing the ability to detect, recognize and eventually reproduce patterns – not measurements. The outcomes are an outcome of the patterns. The patterns are important because they are the ‘content’ from which possibilities arise. Measurements minimizes possibilities while patterns offer trampolines for possibilities. This is especially true as systems in which society thrive become more and more complex and more and more interconnected where finite measurement may simultaneously encourage short term success AND failure as in the measured goal is reached at the expense of society’s benefit. Ponder that a bit. If society embraced ‘the content’ and sought out patterns, inevitably people, and networks of people, would stop seeking to meet specific measurements, but rather seek to optimize moments and situations within a construct of a grander positive vision. It is through this vision that the individual activity actually acquires the ability to optimize the gradients of optimal behavior/actions/morality to progress in value creation (for the task or for the organization/business or for society) which may, or may not, meet some specific measurement.

“The purpose of a system is what it does.”

Stafford Beer

Which leads me to the larger crisis of how measurement has infiltrated society.

A measurement crisis occurs when society loses touch with reality, and society, because it has institutionalized a systematically distorted measurement infrastructure. The measuring, as a focus, absolves people of morality and humanity. Regardless of the need for deep structural transformation the reality is measurement ricochets between the system, people’s lives business, social reality and society. All of this measurement tends to address the process of production or service delivery thereby reducing standards for the procedures and practices of business/everything by establishing norms for their social patterns through numbers and measurement and even identifying structure. Quality of actions and behaviors arc toward standardization and measurement of process and not the content. This spawns a society built around obsessive data gathering and metrics which are then used to objectively measure what is called quality and ensure it is being delivered. This is simply a race to mediocrity from not only a process standpoint but also a hollowing out of human, and humanity, substantiveness. This does doesn’t mean measurement has doesn’t have value just that measurement can be structural cages <built by people in power seeking to maintain power over>. The reality is measurements are, fundamentally, structures. Measurement practices enact realities. They serve as lenses and function to represent aspects of the world in order to garner some consensus and thereby shaping individual and collective perceptions of reality. They can also function as technologies and tools to enable the construction of new realities – either functionally or socially. I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that measurement is intrinsically related to power and control. Those who have the power to create and institutionalize measures and standards control the culture the behaviors and, overall, society. This is in part because standards and measures are unavoidably normative. They say how things ought to be how practices and products and people should look and behave. This means as a consequence instituting measurement is an act of power because doing so means exercising control over people and things. The truth is people humans are controlled through measures and standards. Generally speaking, we like them. Not only do they help us understand our perceptions of reality but they also help us reflect in terms of our endeavors and their value or maybe what is valued by the system itself. Which leads me to measurement induces reflection. We see ourselves through our measures and standards. We are what we measure. The danger in this is when measurement encourages society to lose touch with reality because it is institutionalized a systematically distorted measurement infrastructure. What I mean by that is measurement becomes addictive to those seeking power, and control, and mathematics – the foundation of any measurement – divorces behavior from the questions of morality and integrity which SHOULD be the at the core of the justification for any behavior – measurable or not. measurement simply becomes the guardian of bad ideas and bad behavior. Measurement simply creates a certain voraciousness without thought.

“…the holy men sat in an atmosphere reeking of antiquity, so thick with the dust of ages that you can’t see through it–nor can they.”

Gertrude Bell

This means societies, or maybe more distressingly, people with ideologies, intoxicated by a particular theory of how things should be will usually spawn a system of false measures. They will use measurement to trick people into not only doing things but actually believing that is what ‘reality’ is supposed to be. Measurement instruments and techniques will be built that appear to deal in realities, but instead deal and what is wished for and desired by the institution <or people in power> itself thereby simply becoming control mechanisms. The measurements are used as truncated representations of the complex dynamic world so that people can take them as sufficient understanding of reality when they are in fact insufficient and often misleading. This is worse than flying blind. It is flying blind when you think you are seeing clearly. In harsh terms this suggests designing people through the engineering or building of behavior and mindsets – through measurement. It suggests that the growth processes of individuals, functionally and psychologically, and society in totality, as things of manipulation to be worked on and shaped just as you would the needs and the objectives of a business.

Harshly, this treats society under the guise of “if you do not measure it, you cannot monetize it and if you cannot monetize something then you cannot technically see if an economic investment has worked.” This summarizes the main problem facing, well, everything with regard to investment in anything <including humans and humanity> that everything is required demonstrate that money is well spent.

“Man is a rationalizing animal not a rational one.”

Robert Heinlein

Which leads me to why measurement is so appealing.

It constrains time into a finitely recognizable space. Or maybe differently said it creates a finite space into which we can cram recognizable things. Yes. It’s a comfort zone.

So, yes, time is now a space. Technology, through digital destruction of normal physical presence means that culture is now organized temporally. Social media feeds’ transition from chronological to algorithmic sorting was a manipulation of time and relevance, now primarily determined by someone else, is now the main criteria for occupying valuable real estate in your attention field. And while recency, the freshest information gets priority, plays a role this is where measurement steps in. All information, however significant, must eventually be pushed aside to make room for the new but measurement actually defines significance <even if it is not significant>. This means we tend to jump onto the first informational life raft that can contribute to attaining the measurement objective when feel like we are we drowning in all this information <which is almost all the time>. Technology, as Marshall McLuhan suggested, was an extension of the body. But the corollary is that the body can only extend so far and technology can also demand the amputation of something, in this case, several functions – mental as well as tasks – simply to survive in this environment or, as a corollary, to thrive in whatever measurement zone that exists.

This doesn’t mean we, as individuals, cannot control the rearrangement of functions, but we would be lying to ourselves if we didn’t note the rearrangement arises from the environment/context itself all driven by some measurement we have agreed to. I say this because typical measurement in society actually constrains the ability to rearrange despite whatever ‘instructions’ the environment may provide.

Which leads me to end with the point remains that not only does measurement shape society, but there will be people who actively seek to construct that shaping.

To be clear. There is no political message lurking in that sentence. Societal signals are apolitical and non-ideological therefore measurements are more about simply managing awareness and shaping reality based on, mostly, whatever warped view we may have on what is needed for, or what we perceive is the best for, the future <all based on a very finite view as noted at the beginning of this piece>.

Our society is so deeply shaped by metrics we actually have begun not only navigating everything by measurement, but defining success by the metrics, i.e., we signal and then measure against that signal. The most likes, the most sales, the most growth, the most things, the most followed, all define how we score each other as well as what we do. I would also note that not only do they shape, but they help define the pace and cadence of how we navigate life. Metrics can speed up, slow down, and simplify not only decisions, but decision-making — all of which are the building blocks for shaping society. The metrics create the definitions for all of this and definitions are simple yet central reflections of society so, yes, measurements are de facto definitions. And in this danger lurks. Measurements, just as designed systems tend to be, are constructed from an assumption of correctness. They are built backwards from this assumption. The danger lurks within the fact that the structure, whatever it may be, to meet the measurement goals is unable to assimilate any anomalies or emergent aspects, no matter how positive they could contribute towards an unmeasured success, because they would not assist in reaching the measurement objective. Yeah. This also means that imagination is sacrificed at the altar of a solid stone construct of measurement.

We use ranking and scores to orient ourselves, but performance metrics are also a filter through which we experience the world and our position within it. They are a measuring stick that we use to evaluate and judge ourselves and others. To be clear. We are doing this not because we, society, is stupid but rather more out of survival instincts. Almost everyone perceives the world becoming more and more complex and uncertain therefore our natural tendency is to embrace measurements as they encourage a perception of some level of certainty. They are grips to hold onto. The danger is that much of that measurement is not only ‘future flawed’ <not a particularly useful contributor to a better future>, but superficial therefore the meaning we give to the world is filtered through a massive measured popularity contest in which everyone participates, but the prize is unclear. Ponder because we are the ones being measured and there is someone deciding what should be measured and not all measurement will shape the society we want.